


sometimes it's best to just fly

by banditchika



Category: Runaways (TV 2017)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Coming Out, F/F, Pre-Relationship, but they're in love with each other because it's nico and karolina. of course they're in love, listen though the summary's just to hook you. nico's not straight. she's not!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-30
Updated: 2018-04-30
Packaged: 2019-04-30 02:34:41
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,874
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14486907
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/banditchika/pseuds/banditchika
Summary: Karolina didn't come to a gay bar to be ignored in favor of her straight best friend. Unfortunately, Nico Minoru has always had a certain power over women... Karolina included.





	sometimes it's best to just fly

**Author's Note:**

> deanoru's characterizations are based on both their comic and TV show selves, so they ended up being a weird blend of both. i hope they still read as definitively nico and karolina though!! i've also never had the opportunity to go to a gay bar so take the setting with a grain of salt

Overdramatic, Karolina’s mother would call her. Which, coming from an actress, is really rich—but if anyone’s going to be an expert on dramatic, Leslie Dean has every qualification. Theatrics require an audience; otherwise you would only be acting out, and we wouldn’t want that would we, darling? 

Karolina used to think that her mother was right; that being a good daughter meant smiling for the press and practicing perfect soundbytes for red carpet releases and midnight premiers. 

Then, after she outgrew the narrow mold of her family’s Hollywood lifestyle, she thought that her mother was selfish. Karolina? Overdramatic? So what if she is! She’s a human being and more than that, a growing girl. If she has strong feelings, then she’s going to express them. Or is Karolina not allowed even that much? 

It had taken years for Karolina to come into her own, to sift through her parents’ lessons and toss out the rotten apples. For all that Karolina loved—loves—her family, she wouldn’t have thrived under their rules, not in the way that she is now. And though Karolina hasn’t lost her penchant for ‘overdramatics’, as her mother still insists on saying, the ground under her feet is steady. 

Karolina knows who she is, and right now? 

Right now, sulking in the middle of a gay bar while her straight best friend gets chatted up by a girl, Karolina knows she’s _definitely_ not being overdramatic. 

“So you really make all your clothes yourself?” Kate, the most successful of Nico’s many admirers, eyes Nico’s outfit with what might be actual appreciation and not thinly-veiled longing for the girl underneath. Karolina tugs sharply at the ends of her hair. She’s not buying it: as if someone who thinks it’s appropriate to wear purple aviators indoors is an expert on fashion.

Karolina feels bad almost immediately after thinking that. It’s not like her to be snippy, especially over something as petty as being passed over by a pretty girl. 

And Karolina can admit that Kate is a very, very pretty girl. She holds herself with a surety and confidence that makes Karolina feel every inch of her five feet and nine inches, lumbering and clumsy as she towers over Kate flirting with Nico.

And, like, Karolina gets it. Really, she does. Nico’s beautiful—gorgeous in a way that could dry up a person’s mouth like cotton, the kind of captivating that made you look twice when you passed by. Coupled with the charisma that Nico wears as easily as her dark lipstick and mathematically-applied eyeliner? Quite frankly, you’d have to dead to not be at least a little attracted to Nico; so really, Karolina understands. She gets it. 

What Karolina doesn’t get is why so many girls are flocking to Nico like students to caffeine when Nico is so painfully, tragically straight. 

… Right? 

“Not _all_ my clothes,” Nico says, and Karolina snaps back to herself just in time to see how Nico’s mouth hooks itself into a pleased little smile. Something sick and oily twists in Karolina’s stomach at the sight. 

That’s Nico’s _‘you’re dumb, but you’re my kind of dumb’_ smile, all wry affection and reluctant delight. Karolina loves that smile. She shouldn’t feel so betrayed just because it’s being pointed at someone other than Gert and Chase and Molly and Alex—and her. Karolina _knows_ that, logically, but a small part of her is still discomfited by how strange it is, to see Nico directing that special smile at a stranger. Even strangers as pretty as Kate. 

“But for elaborate things like this? I have to, unless I want to shell out hundreds for what basically amounts to a frilly Halloween costume,” Nico continues, totally ignorant of the way Karolina’s roiling gut batters against her heart. She shrugs, all careless confidence and charm, perched on the barstool with her ankles crossed like she’s as much a fixture of the bar as the pride flag nailed above the doorway. “If you want something done right…” 

“Do it yourself. Truer words were never said.” Kate nods sagely and whips off her aviators. Her eyes are a shocking electric blue, like someone took a piece of the sky and painted Kate with it. Karolina, despite herself, feels herself shrinking into her seat. How is it that Karolina can feel so ungainly and wobbly even though she’s sitting? Even though she’s in one of the few places meant to be welcoming to her? “Y’know Nico, I get the feeling you’re more of a coffee girl, but... can I buy you a drink?” 

Karolina’s head shoots up. “A-a drink?” 

Kate blinks at Karolina, as if just remembering that she exists. “Yep. I can buy you one too, if you’d like. It might even keep tall, dark, and patriotic from glaring at us,” she says, sotto-voice. The bartender upon whom Kate has bestowed the nickname sighs. 

“Your flirting’s as terrible as ever, Princess.” Her name tag reads America. Karolina feels a deep kinship with her; America looks like she wants to go home even more than Karolina does, and Karolina feels validated in this bar tonight.

Kate, however, doesn’t seem to share her opinion. She turns away from Nico and points right between America’s eyes. “Shhh, don’t judge me. Not everyone can be a sapphic dreamboat, Miss America.” 

Nico interrupts before America can fire back with what will definitely be an appropriately cool one-liner. 

(Seriously, what’s up with all the girls in this bar? As a lesbian, Karolina’s never been happier, but as a person she’s extremely intimidated.) 

“Thanks for the offer, but I’m not looking for anything right now.” The tension balled up tight in Karolina’s chest eases, just a little, at those words—then explodes into a stranglehold as Nico jerks a thumb at her, grinning crookedly. “My friend Karolina is, though!” 

“I—oh, no, that’s—” Nico’s hand, small and warm and delicate, clasps her own, and before Karolina knows it she’s being tugged off the seat to stand right next to Nico—just a little too close to Kate for anyone’s comfort. Kate and America blink at her, bemused. Karolina wants to wither away on the spot. “It’s fine, Nico.”

Nico frowns. “... Really? But you were staring at Kate so hard that I was sure you—” 

“Woah, wait a sec!” Kate holds up a hand. Her eyes are narrowed in fierce concentration. Karolina’s shoulders tense under the weight of that gaze. “You’re… not straight?” 

“Told you.” America radiates smugness as she wipes down the bar. 

“Don’t rub it in, America.” Kate glances at Nico, then back at Karolina. She laughs, shaking her head. “Wow. This is embarrassing—never thought I’d mess up like this. I kinda thought—I mean, I really had you pegged for straight.” 

“Me?” Karolina’s indignation must slip into her voice, because Kate’s sheepish smile twists into a grimace, like she can hardly imagine anything worse either. Karolina sputters. “Straight—I, I mean—in my me? _At a gay bar?”_ >

“See, now I know that you’re gay,” Kate shoots her finger guns, the awkwardness sliding off her back like water off a duck. “Sorry about that, though. I swear I almost never mess up.”

Karolina doesn’t really know what to say to that. She doesn’t look straight, does she? Karolina tries to take a peek at her outfit—true, she’s not dripping in flannel or snapbacks, but what straight woman would tattoo an inverted triangle on her arm? Karolina sometimes feels so gay that she could start radiating rainbows any second, but evidently not everyone thinks the same way. 

“It’s fine,” Karolina sighs. Years of smiling through Hollywood’s incessant, deliberate ignorance has given her superhuman social graces. Being taken for straight is practically nothing compared to that. 

She takes a deep breath, lets it out; imagines herself as a balloon releasing air. “Is that why no one’s been talking to me all evening?” Karolina’s voice comes out a little more petulantly than she’d like, and she hurries to explain herself. 

“I mean, not that anyone’s obligated to talk to me! It’s just that… a lot of people have come by tonight?” And not a single one has so much as tried to make polite conversation with her. Or even glanced her way, really—and okay, Karolina can understand not wanting to talk to every stranger in the bar, gay solidarity or not, but come on. That has to be weird, right?

“Nah girl, I get you,” Kate nods knowingly, and Karolina likes her just a little more for the way that she seems to really, really mean it. “But thinking you’re straight likely isn’t the only reason. Most of it’s probably ‘cause of Nico, here.” 

“Me?”

“Yeah, you. Don’t you know? Gays just love goth girls.” Nico barks a laugh at Kate’s frankness, and even America manages a smile. Karolina, however, is still struggling to hold onto her zen. 

She gets it, she really does, but to have the reason why practically every single girl in the bar has been angling towards Nico since the moment she walked in spelled out so plainly isn’t exactly what Karolina would call fun.

“Well, sorry for all the confusion,” Nico says, the curve of her smile a gentle, sloping thing. A bit of tension eases from Karolina’s shoulders at the mere sight of it, and from the way Kate grins back, Karolina knows that there won’t be any hard feelings tonight. Nico tends to have that effect on people when she’s not bristling and being an adorable grump. 

“Nah, don’t worry about it. Good luck tonight, yeah?” Kate’s cheeks dimple as she smiles at Karolina, and Karolina can’t help but smile back. No wonder even notoriously-heterosexual Nico was so easily swept up. Kate’s charisma is such that you can’t help but be pulled into her orbit, complicated feelings be damned. “And if you ever change your mind, Nico—you’ve got my number.” 

Kate sashays away with one last wink. “Bishop, out!”

“See you,” laughs Nico. 

“Bye,” Karolina mutters.

“Princess,” America scoffs, rolling her eyes, but Karolina can see another story in the way her lips twitch. Maybe America has her own version of Nico’s special smile, reserved for one Kate Bishop. 

"You know,” Nico offers, drumming her fingers against the bar’s surface, a smudge of shadow in the bar’s warm colors. Nico’s eyes are bright, and Karolina watches her watch Kate leave with something like envy burning in her, something she doesn’t want to name. “If anyone else ever said that while hitting on me, I’d deck them in the face, but she really makes it work.”

She really does, but Karolina definitely doesn’t want to admit that. She makes a noncommittal noise and reclaims her seat, twining her fingers together like a net; like if she tries hard enough, she can press her feelings down into the depths of herself and keep them unnameable, unknowable. But without Kate’s vibrant presence to distract her, Nico picks up on Karolina’s sullen silence and takes her hand. 

“You look pissed, Karrie. What’s up?” 

She’s not pissed. She’s just upset. About a lot of things; so many that she has a hard time picking just one, and some she isn’t certain she has the right to be upset about. 

But she has to, because with each second of silence Nico’s brows furrow just a little bit more, the picture of friendly concern. She’s always been such a den mother, and Karolina can’t help a reluctant smile. It’s so like Nico worry over them despite her snarky armor and tough girl act. 

“I just can’t believe another lesbian would think I was straight,” Karolina finally offers. Nico laughs under her breath, warm and smoky. A horrifying thought occurs to her; Karolina cups her face in her hands. “Did she think I was the straight friend?” 

“Kate’s bi, actually,” America says, cleaning a shot glass. She sets it down with a clink. “But I see your point.” 

“Sorry,” Karolina sighs. “I just can’t get over it. Straight? Really?” 

“Yeah, I dunno. Kate really does get it right most of the time—outside of the bar, I mean.” America rolls her eyes. She cups her chin in her hand and hums thoughtfully. “Maybe your friend here just skews with people’s gaydars.” 

“Me?” Nico asks again. She shakes her head, disbelieving. “It’s a nice theory, but it’s not me.” 

“You sure? ‘Cuz you’re the only new thing that’s messed up Kate’s track record in awhile now. Not to mention all the other girls that tried to chat you up tonight.” America picks up another glass and scans the bar. When no one flags her down for another drink, she turns her attention on them in full. “Correlation isn’t causation, but the evidence seems pretty solid to me.” 

“Ah, but I have a counterpoint.” Nico raises a finger. She glances at Karolina from the corner of her eye, then takes a deep breath. Her voice is steady when she turns back to America. “They weren’t wrong.

“I’m bi.” 

The world comes screeching to a halt. 

If Karolina had a drink, she’d drop it. Her hair whips around her face in a veil of gold as she jerks in her seat to boggle at Nico. America, for her part, only nods sagely. 

“Oh, nice.” She holds out a surprisingly-delicate fist for Nico to bump, then goes back to cleaning her glass. 

“Y-You’re bi?” Karolina, who doesn’t have even a molecule—no, not even an atom’s worth—of America’s cool, spins in her seat and sputters helplessly, pathetically. 

Nico’s jaw tightens, and Karolina can see how her pale cheeks flush even under the makeup under Karolina’s scrutiny. She bites her lip, all sharp incisors and white teeth. “I… yeah. I am.” 

“You never said anything.” 

“There was never a good time,” Nico mumbles. She traces the edge of one of her rings with a painted fingernail and takes a deep breath. “It took a while to realize, and when I did, I just—I don’t know.” Nico doesn’t fidget, she never does, but Karolina can read the plea written bright and burning in her eyes as they flicker across her face. “I didn’t want it to be a thing, I guess. A small part of me hoped that you all would realize without me having to say so.” 

But Karolina hadn’t. Nico’s always been a touchy-feely person, even before she swapped out her horn-rimmed glasses for dramatic makeup and plain dress shirts for elaborate lace. Walking arm in arm, shoulder-to-shoulder, hip pressed against hip is almost thoughtlessly familiar, as easy as breathing. 

Karolina’s grown up with Nico’s hand in hers, watching her brush Molly’s bangs out of her eyes or comb dye into Gert’s hair. Karolina is so accustomed to Nico’s easy, casual affection that she never stopped to wonder if there was something more behind it—that while Karolina bit her lip and stared at girls so pretty as to be angels, Nico was doing just the same. 

“I… wow,” Karolina says, running a hand through her hair. It’s a lot to take in. The bar’s ambiance, laughter and music and lights, fills the silence between them as Karolina chews on her thoughts. 

“Karo?” Nico says. She takes Karolina’s hand in her own, worrying her thumb over the knuckles. “Are you upset?” Nico’s brows pinch, and Karolina can almost hear the surly thoughts battling against concern in the confines of her head.

“No, no. Just… a little surprised, is all.” Karolina squeezes their linked hands and smiles weakly. “I really had no idea.” 

“Sorry I didn’t tell you sooner. There was just… never really an opportunity that wasn’t awkward.” Nico still looks worried. “I didn’t—I didn’t tell anyone else either.” 

“You don’t have to apologize! Coming out is—you shouldn’t ever feel like you have to, even to me.” America gives Karolina an approving nod. At least someone seems to be enjoying how weird this situation is. 

“I guess you’re right.” Nico’s smile is relieved. “Well… I’m glad that you’re the first one to find out, even if the situation’s a little informal.”

“No one else really knows?” It’s not so hard to believe, considering that Nico would rather pull teeth than open up about her feelings, but given how easily Nico told America, Karolina guesses that this isn’t the first time she’s come out to others.

And she’s right. Nico leans back in her seat and rubs the grain of the bar’s surface with a long finger.

“Well—no one that matters.” Nico chews on her bottom lip. “I think Gert and Molly probably suspect, but I haven’t told them yet. You’re the first, which is just fine by me."

Nico's gaze softens, the corners of her lips hooking up and eyes curving into crescents.

“I always wanted you to be the one I told first, anyways.” 

Maybe it’s the way Nico’s smiling, or that Karolina is so honored, so pleased that Nico had wanted her to be the first—but her stomach swoops, her heart flutters, and Karolina thinks that this is how it must feel like to fly. 

It looks like Kate Bishop had gotten one thing right about Karolina after all. 

All gays really do love goth girls.

**Author's Note:**

> and that's a wrap! the title's from carly rae jepsen's store, which has no relevance to the fic beyond the fact that i, the author, Really Love Carly Rae
> 
> this fic is also based off of [ this!](https://charoixluvr420.tumblr.com/post/170782615812/okay-cheesy-au-where-nico-goes-with-karolina-to-a) the artist has some really good deanoru art on their blog, so i hope you'll check out more of their stuff and give them the praise they deserve!


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